Final answer:
Stateless inspection firewalls work by examining individual packets based on certain criteria and comparing them against predefined rules to permit or block them.
Step-by-step explanation:
A stateless inspection firewall is a type of firewall that works by examining individual packets based on certain criteria, such as the source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols. It does not maintain any information about the state or context of past packets.
When a packet arrives at a stateless inspection firewall, it is compared against a set of predefined rules. If the packet matches any of the rules, it is either permitted or blocked based on the action specified in the rule. For example, a rule might allow incoming web traffic on port 80.
Unlike stateful inspection firewalls, which keep track of the state of connections and can make more sophisticated decisions based on the context of the packets, stateless inspection firewalls offer higher performance but provide less advanced security features and are more susceptible to certain types of attacks.